Capture
by Kagedtiger
Summary: [slash: Howell x D's Father] Leon and D's story is merely a reiteration of the past, old steps to an old dance. Only the dancers change.
1. Part 1: Howell

Capture  
Part I - Howell

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**Notes/Disclaimer: Am I the only one who's noticed how similar Leon's situation was to Howell's? Well, anyway, it spawned this fic. Petshop of Horrors and its characters, though I love them, do not belong to me.  
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I know it's ridiculous, but I can't stop thinking about him. He's cold. A cold, arrogant jerk. And yet... And yet there's something about him that draws me to him, keeps me coming back, keeps me returning for our verbal sparring again and again.

Maybe it's in the way he teases me, the way he leads me on and teases me forward and runs circles around me and drives me absolutely stark raving mad. Maybe it's the look in his eyes when he does it. Maybe it's the deep, dark depths of his eyes, always so serious and hidden, strange and stormy and full of terrible secrets.

Or maybe it's his hesitancy, the slight pause that no one else but me would notice. The coldness, the blast of icy winter that follows him everywhere and chills all of those around him, it parts. No one else sees that he curbs it slightly, around me. No one else knows him well enough to notice how he seems slightly unsure of himself in my presence, a man who is _never_ unsure of anything. But here he is. Why?

A rhetorical question. The mysteries are so thick between us that I could wade through them for years without ever approaching this particular question.

But it's not enough for me not to know. I'm at this school because I can't stop digging, because my whole life I have been obsessed with solving mysteries. And he is the greatest one of all.

This is why I choose to approach him. This is why I force him down, knowing full well that he is allowing me to force him, that I would never be able to touch him otherwise.

Silk sliding on skin. Silk sliding from skin. Silk sliding snake-like onto the ground at our feet.

This is why I try to have his body, try to claim it. There is a need like terror possessing me. The knowledge that I will never know this man, never understand him, if we should live a thousand years. This is why I run my fingers over pale, delicate skin, searching for answers, searching some hint of his emotions, his intentions, searching for a bottom to the mystery, like treading water when your feet can't reach the ground.

Dive under and look down, and it goes on forever beneath you, a dark cavernous depth of water, endless, endless, and deep. So very deep. Stare into its blackness, its eternity. Stare down, knowing you could fall forever, and lose yourself in the madness and the terror.

And I lose myself. I lose myself in his body, in the ecstasy. I feel the condescension of him. Like a God coming down from on high, allowing himself to be taken. Even as I'm inside him I know in my mind that I am not touching him. I can never touch him. Even as we tangle and moan and stumble towards something that has been inevitable since the moment I first saw him, even as we do this, I can feel him standing above us, cool calm, collected. Watching us, with that amused little smile on his face, untouched, unruffled.

Untouchable.

I've always known he is, but I have to try. I have to do this, you understand. I know he understands. He would not allow me this moment of trying to claim him if he did not. Although I know that he allows it because he knows that it is impossible. He finds it amusing that I should try such a thing, that I should attempt the unthinkable act of trying to make him mine.

But he is. I know he is, some small part of him, because I have seen the cracks in his mask. I have seen the splintering, spidery cracks in the shattered ice. Not yet fallen to pieces. Perhaps it never will. Perhaps it is merely a bullet-hole in an glacier, like a mosquito bite, too small to be noticed. But I am inside him now, and surely that must be registered, at least on some level.

I close my eyes at the climax and can feel his stare boring into me. The way he watches me, the piercing cold intensity of his gaze and it's a wonder I don't freeze on the spot, a solid block of ice at the eternal peak of pleasure, forever frozen with him in this position, for eternity. I would almost welcome it, to be caught forever. At least I would be given the time to work on the mysteries. I could begin to search for the ends of the Gordian Knot that is his soul. Begin the slow unraveling.

But time will pause for no one. And I see him getting up, still calm, still amused. I watch as the silk slides back over his shoulders like water. And in his profile I see that smirk, the knowing, unaltered smile.

But...

But for just a second, just a tiny, infinite fraction of a moment, it falters. And I see what I have always suspected: a strange, lost look. A child who doesn't know what he wants, or why. A solitary animal strayed too far from the herd. A being in unfamiliar surroundings, with desires he does not understand, but cannot suppress.

But it is only a moment.

And he moves away from me.

And I call after him, intending to ask something, find a single question whose answer could somehow define for me his essence, encompass the whole of his mysteries. I call his name, and he turns, and looks questioningly, uncaringly back at me.

And there is no question. Of course there isn't. How could there be?

Instead I ask why he gave his teacher the credit for his work. A small mystery, insignificant perhaps beside all the others. But unlike the others, it is something for which perhaps an answer exists.

He smiles. He understands why this question and not another.

"Human fame does not interest me," he says.

And then, like an icy breeze, he is gone.


	2. Part 2: D

Capture  
Part II - D 

In part of my mind I think that I should tell him. But of course that is ridiculous. How could I tell him? It would mean explaining to him what I am. Explaining everything. And I cannot do that.

I can never do that.

It is a human sort of impulse, the urge to tell him. I must get away from these humans, spend more time out in the purifying, calming essence of nature. These humans are beginning to infect me.

I've never met a human quite like him before. Of course, there have been many who desired to possess me. We are a beautiful race, after all. But he is the first, the only, to ever desire with such intense passion to _understand_ me. And that is by far the harder wish to grant.

I leave him with the memories of possessing me. He has been... an amusing human. Something different. He is perhaps someone with whom it is acceptable to leave a small piece of myself.

It seems only fitting, given what he has left with me.

It is ironic, that I should be the one with this burden. As the cycle of our species goes, I am the Winter. I know that. It is my duty, my position to be ice, death, barrenness. It is I who will bring complete death to these people, like a blanket of snow to cover the sleeping earth, clearing away the filth of the previous year for the new spring.

The Spring. My son. Life anew, and perhaps... hope? I have not seen him in quite a while. My father, the Autumn, took him away from me. Autumn is worse than Winter, I think. At least in winter you are prepared for the cold. Autumn is the chilling descent into the winter madness. It strikes when you are not ready, throws chilling breezes at you at the end of deceptively warm days. Winter may be the season of death, but Autumn, even in its brilliance, is the season of dying.

I should tell him. But... no. No, of course I shouldn't. What I _should_ do is rid myself of it. This _thing_.

His child.

Even now it grows inside me. The poor human would never understand if I told him. But nevertheless, it is true. The child grows in my womb. A human child.

I should rid myself of it. I cannot reincarnate properly into a tainted vessel. To truly be a full earth spirit, my child can be nothing less than my direct genetic copy. It cannot share its genes with the species that oppresses us. It would not be right.

I should rid myself of it. I should purge my womb so that it is ready to begin the creation of our next true generation. I should...

But I do not. And this I cannot understand.

Is it because of that human? Ridiculous. Absurd. No human should have a hold over one of us like this. I played with him simply. I dabbled with him because he was amusing. Not because... not because...

I do not understand it. I try to tell myself that this does not frighten me, but it does. The very thought that somehow, he has managed to make some sort of claim to me, it frightens me down to the very depths of my soul.

It is an interesting emotion, regret. Bitter and oh so sweet and rare to the taste. Such a delicacy, one that I do not believe I have ever enjoyed before. It sends shivers through my skin. Delectable. Delightful. Delicious.

A piece of me is staying behind, just memories, the thoughts that will torment him, and the tiniest, most unimaginably small sliver of my heart remains with him. A piece to replace what he has left with me.

Ownership is not an entirely human concept. Animals have territory, certainly. They will fight to defend a kill, or a mate. But only humans have quite this particular brand of owning, the idea of owning a person, their emotions, their thoughts. Only humans can take hearts.

Oh sweet regret, how you tease my tongue as I leave. In a way, I welcome it. It keeps me company. It is a welcome distraction from the small hollow feeling that comes from the place where the missing piece of my heart belongs. The regret keeps the emptiness company.

I should get rid of it. Destroy the child and move on.

But I do not. I will not.

This infatuation is new to me. It is something I don't understand; it is intriguing. _He_ is intriguing. I... want to see how long it will last me. Perhaps it can be another of my experiments, this human infatuation.

I shall keep this piece of him. As long as the piece of myself remains with him, I shall keep this babe in compensation.

And we shall see how long it lasts.

Part I

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Author's Note: Okay, there's seems to have been a bit of confusion here, so let me clear a few things up. Yes, Papa D is carrying Agent Howell's baby. But no, the baby is not the D that we know from the series. That D is the Spring mentioned in Part II.

_However_, Papa D does _not_ get rid of the baby. This is the child that he has at the end of book ten. I created this fic so that I would have an excuse for when Grandpa D has the following quote:

"My son... you have given birth... to a human child. No matter how many you betrayed and killed... it was your wish to be reborn as one of them."

Ie in my version Papa D is supposed to reincarnate as a normal D, but he can't do it properly because the perfect genetic copy has been tainted, so instead he becomes this hybrid half-human. Sorry if that wasn't clear from the story, but anyway, there you go. If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask them in your reviews.  
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